


and the air’s gonna go to hell

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Comedy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Phan AU, also there’s no actual homophobia, and far too many pretentious descriptions of weather, but something is perceived as homophobia so tread carefully ig, dan wears makeup and phil works in an office, missed meeting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 11:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20741240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Hot didn’t cover it.  The day they met, it was downright broiling outside, and humid too, the kind of weather where if you looked out your window, you wouldn’t see a single living thing out there.  It was the kind of weather that creates an eerie kind of silence, when the world looks as pretty as a picture with a blue sky and bright sun, and yet everyone knows better than to venture into its picturesque beauty.  It was the kind of weather that when kids ask to go out, pointing at the way the light falls on the empty streets, imagining running down them before the seasons change and the rain comes back, mothers shake their heads and tell them looks can be deceiving.Imagine.  That was the day they met.Written for the pff bingo 2019, for the prompts Missed Meeting, Running Late, Weddings, and Makeup





	and the air’s gonna go to hell

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU. Yeah. I really have nothing else to say.
> 
> If you like the fic, please leave a comment or kudos, or you can reblog it on my tumblr, which is @iamalwaysclowning.

Hot didn’t cover it. The day they met, it was downright broiling outside, and humid too, the kind of weather where if you looked out your window, you wouldn’t see a single living thing out there. It was the kind of weather that creates an eerie kind of silence, when the world looks as pretty as a picture with a blue sky and bright sun, and yet everyone knows better than to venture into its picturesque beauty. It was the kind of weather that when kids ask to go out, pointing at the way the light falls on the empty streets, imagining running down them before the seasons change and the rain comes back, mothers shake their heads and tell them looks can be deceiving.

Imagine. That was the day they met.

——— 

_ Not a living thing out. _ That’s what Phil Lester thinks when he looks out his window that morning. _ Not a single one. _It must be awful today.

See, people are the world in towns like this, and people are how the folks that live in them gauge everything, from what stores are good to what humans are good. Another word for this is gossip, but no one likes to admit that.

But the best example of this by far, especially to city eyes, is weather. In most places, if someone wanted to find out what it was like outside, they’d look it up online, or maybe in the newspaper. They might check the thermostat on the wall. Not here. Here, if a person wants to know the weather, they look out their window and count how many people they see out. Most days in the summer, it’s three or four every ten minutes. 

Phil Lester’s seen zero so far today, and he’s been watching for twenty minutes. The world outside his window seems almost to shimmer in the heat, and Phil almost groans at the thought he’ll have to go out in it. His work only being a few blocks away from where he lives, and the whole town being quite small, Phil doesn’t own a car, just a bike, and today, his bike’s down at the shop being fixed. He’s going to have to walk to work. God, this is going to be hell.

Phil reluctantly takes a last sip of his coffee, which has grown lukewarm in the time he’s been watching the window, and checks his watch. He’s got thirty minutes before he has to be at work. It’ll take at least fifteen to walk there, and Phil likes to get places early, but today, he can’t bring himself to go outside before he absolutely has to.

Who knows. Maybe the weather will miraculously change in the next ten minutes. Maybe it’ll all turn out alright.

So Phil stalls before going out, washing his mug and adjusting his tie. God, Phil hates his dress code. _ Plain, nice shirts, and appropriate ties for business. _The “appropriate” bit had been added after a colleague wore one with a few choice words on it. Their manager had been mad as anything, but it wasn’t technically against any of the code. There had been a bit of a freak-out. Phil found it hilarious.

He checks his watch again, sighing as he realizes that he’ll have to go now in order to get to work on time. Phil grabs his work bag, checking to make sure his computer and the papers he’s dealing with right now are all there, taking a little more time than he usually does. By the time he’s standing at the door, ready to venture into the heat, five more minutes have passed. _ Shit. _To be on time, he’ll have to run.

The moment Phil steps outside, he can feel the heat. The air is oppressive, so dense it chokes, and Phil feels like he’s in a steamer. Still, he sets off at a fast jog, trying not to swear at the weather. Phil has a rule not to swear out loud.

So instead, as he makes his way down the street, his body hating him each step of the way, he curses it in the way he’s seen old Christian grandmothers curse, telling the air that it’s from the devil.

“You’re full of sin,” Phil mutters at the air. “The devil must have sent you here to test us.”

He gets pretty involved with it as his pace slows to walking, trying to come up with more and more creative ways to tell the air it’s sinful. “You’re going to be damned forever,” he says as he walks down the alley that’s a shortcut to his building, and the devil’s going to see you in hell.”

It’s as Phil’s saying that last one that he runs straight into someone, who had apparently been standing in the alley already.

“Fuck!” The guy says when Phil walks into him, knocking him partially over. “What the fuck?”

Phil looks at him awkwardly. The guy’s good looking, that’s for sure, with curly brown hair and pretty eyes with eye shadow over them, and Phil finds himself stumbling over his words as he apologizes.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you there, I was…” What was Phil doing? He can’t say he was cursing like a Christian grandmother at the sky; that’ll drive the guy away if nothing else does. “I was walking. Um. It was an accident, sorry!” Phil smiles nervously. His face feels hot and sweaty. Ugh. He must look awful. “I’m Phil!”

“It was an accident.” For some reason, the guy looks angry. Like, really angry. Phil wonders what he said wrong. He pushes his hair back off his forehead, where it had started to fall from the heat.

“Yeah. I’m really spacey sometimes, see, and I guess I was just kind of lost in my own head there and didn’t see you—”

The guy laughs, a short, this-isn’t-actually-funny kind of laugh. He’s tall, maybe even taller than Phil is. If he tried to fight him, Phil has no doubt the other guy would win. “Right.” He stares at Phil coldly. “Which is why you told me ‘the devil would see me in hell’ when you walked into me. Like, I get it,” he continues, still glaring, “you don’t see dudes walking around in makeup much around here. But that’s not an excuse to spew your fundamentalist Christian bullshit at me.”

_ Oh. Oh shit. _ “That’s not— I wasn’t talking to you,” Phil says. “Like, I’m not homophobic. Or anything else.”

The guy raises a brow, and even though Phil should probably not be thinking this about him, especially now, he can’t help but notice that he looks attractive as fuck. “Who were you talking to then? Because I don’t see anyone else.”

“Uh.” Phil looks around, trying not to blush. “Uh, the air?”

The guy raises his other eyebrow, and Phil has to try hard not to giggle. _ This is a serious situation. _ “And why on earth,” he says slowly, as if trying to comprehend Phil and failing, “were you telling the air your fundamentalist Christian bullshit?”

“I’m not Christian!” Phil says.

The guy laughs out loud at that. “I thought you were telling the air it’s going to hell?” 

“I wasn’t! I mean, I was, but it wasn’t like that.” 

“What was it like then?” The guy seems to have relaxed a bit now, his face a bit less angry looking, and even though they’re technically still arguing, Phil finds himself relaxing too, falling into conversation with him as easily as if they’ve known each other for years.

“Well, I don’t really swear. Out loud.” Phil sighs. Why does he have to be so bad at explanations? “So I was trying to come up with alternatives because I really wanted to swear at the weather, and that got me trying to be as dramatic as possible with it. And then I ran into you.” He shrugs. Hopefully, that seems fairly plausible. It’s true, after all.

The guy nods seriously, but unless Phil’s reading him wrong, his face looks amused. “Either you’re insane or you’re lying,” he says, and nods again, shrugging at Phil, who smiles awkwardly in response. “That story is crazy, but you don’t seem homophobic.”

“I’m not!”

The guy laughs again, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his very tight pants. “I’m Dan.”

“Phil,” Phil responds.

“You already said.”

“Right!” Phil fidgets his hands around, trying to stare at Dan without actually staring at Dan. Because that would look awkward, and Phil even though Phil’s probably already ruined himself on that front, he’d rather not look any more awkward. Now Phil can see that Dan’s not only wearing eyeshadow and eyeliner, but blush as well, and wow, Phil did not think he had a thing for guys and makeup, but here he is.

“So,” Dan says, “Where are you going?”

“Work,” Phil answers, then his eyes widen. “Oh no.” He checks his watch, but the time only says what he already knows. “I missed my meeting. God, my boss is going to kill me.” 

Dan almost looks ashamed of himself. “I made you miss your meeting? Why didn’t you just stop talking to me?”

“Because I forgot!” Phil says. “And I didn’t want to leave with you thinking I was a homophobe, either!”

“You know what, I am actually starting to believe that story of yours,” Dan says, leaning elegantly against the wall of the alley. He’s wearing ripped jeans. He looks hot wearing ripped jeans. 

Phil smiles, turning to look at his building, which is across the street, and sighing. _ How can he explain this? _ “Thanks. And goodbye.” As he starts walking away, noticing once again how awful the weather is around him, Phil is glad to think of finally getting into air conditioning, but at the same time he feels a certain sadness. He’ll probably never see Dan again, and for some reason he wishes more than anything else that wasn’t true. _ For some reason. _Phil shakes his head to himself. He knows exactly what reason, but that doesn’t make it any better. For God’s sake, Dan started this conversation thinking he was a homophobe. 

“Wait!” Phil turns back around to Dan, and Dan hands him a piece of paper, folded. Phil’s heart races. “Take this. And I’m sorry for making you late.”

“It’s fine,” Phil says. “You’re more interesting than that meeting anyways.”

As he walks away again, this time not turning around, no matter how much he wants to, Phil opens up the paper. It’s a phone number. _ Dan’s phone number. _

Before he starts working, though after he’s been berated by his manager about the meeting, he sends a message.

_ This is Phil :) _

_ I liked your makeup btw_

When he checks his phone at lunch break, Phil smiles.

_ hi phil! it’s dan _

_ i liked your smile. _

———

Cold didn’t cover how the temperature felt that day. The thermostat said it was below zero out, and it felt it too, with the winds blowing as fast and hard as if they were God’s wrath. It was cold enough that parents grumbled but drove their kids to school, because by God, they would freeze in that kind of weather. If you looked out the window that day, you’d see the trees’ bare branches whipped around by some heavenly battle, any loose object left on the ground tossed up and into the sky. You’d see faces peer out of windows, and know that inside, they’re turning up the heat as far as they can afford. People wear scarves indoors, and not a single person would be outside. You’d have to be insane to do that. When school gets out, the roads are full but the sidewalks are empty, serene except for the wind that ravages the trees above. A few fallen branches litter the ground, casualties of the empty storm. That’s what people called it: empty. A storm without thunder, without lightning or rain or snow, only wind and the chill that came with it.

Imagine. That was the day they were married.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr @iamalwaysclowning


End file.
